Facebook stops third-party apps from stealing users’ data

San Francisco, April 25: Facebook has finally begun its crackdown on third-party apps from stealing, sharing or spamming your data without permission from its platform as well as from Instagram.

In a post on its developers’ page late on Tuesday, Facebook said the new apps "created from today onwards will not have access to publish posts to Facebook as the logged in user". According to Facebook, the publish_actions permission will be deprecated. This permission granted apps access to publish posts to Facebook as the logged in user. "Apps created before today that have been previously approved to request publish_actions can continue to do so until August 1. No further apps will be approved to use publish_actions via app review," the Facebook post noted. British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica was found misusing users’ data collected by a Facebook quiz app which used the "Login with Facebook" feature.

"Developers currently utilising publish_actions are encouraged to switch to Facebook’s Share dialogs for web, iOS and Android," Facebook said. (IANS)